What is sedimentation?

Abstract

Abstract This introduction to the special issue “What is Sedimentation? Consciousness, History, Language” clarifies the central role of sedimentation in Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology and sets the stage for the essays that follow. Borrowed from geology, sedimentation functions in phenomenology as a concept-metaphor for the temporal layering of experience, habit, and meaning, linking static, genetic, and generative phenomenology. It names both the formation of a sedimented unconscious and the possibility of reactivation, thereby grounding phenomenological accounts of historicity, tradition, and critique. The introduction focuses on Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Ricœur, Gadamer, and Derrida, while also indicating later reinterpretations in figures such as Stiegler and in political theory. It then presents the individual contributions, which explore sedimentation across embodiment, language, narrative, institutions, surprise, gesture, and psychopathology, showing how it conditions continuity while opening possibilities of transformation.